The latest Spike Lee Joint might not be the director’s tightest, but it is a passion project as playful as it is nostalgic. New York gets a lot of love, as do Spike’s earlier films – Rosie Perez and Nick Turturro show up in pop-off-the-screen bits – and New York sports teams. The last time Lee adapted a film that was considered an untouchable masterpiece (Park Chan-wook’s “Old Boy”) didn’t go so well; it felt flat, a rote redoing. He’s done better here in reenvisioning Akira Kurosawa’s great 1963 kidnap noir, “High and Low” starring the indelible Toshiro Mifune and adapted from Ed McBain’s novel “King’s Ransom,” flipping a shoe executive whose son is targeted for kidnapping during a corporate merger for a music mogul arguably fashioned after Jay-Z. Denzel Washington reunites with Lee for the first time in 19 years (they have five collaborations, with the previous being “Inside Man”) to play the exec, David King, looking to buy back control of his records label when the kidnapping goes down. The ransom is $17.5 million, which is the money David needs to get his Stackin’ Hits back. But there’s a hitch: Who’s snatched from camp is not David’s son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) but Kyle (Elijah Wright), the son of his loyal chauffeur and right hand man Paul (Jeffery Wright, Elijah’s dad IRL), mistaken for Trey by the kidnapper. It’s here that David has a crisis of conscience when he balks at paying for Kyle, causing a rift between David and Paul and raising questions of character and selfishness from David’s wife (Ilfenesh Hadera, elegant with a capital E) and son.
Not sure that “Gladiator,” the Oscar-winning sword-and-sandal revenge epic starring Russell Crowe, needed a sequel, but the fates, furies and a cadre of calculating Hollywood studio execs have deemed it so with a clear, hopeful eye on a box-office bang-up. It’s not on par with its 2000 predecessor, but the script by David Scarpa, who collaborated last year on “Napoleon” with director Ridley Scott (still cranking them out well into his 80s), does connect the dots smartly with blood and purpose. We find ourselves 20-something years since the events of the last film that concluded with the death of Crowe’s Colosseum warrior, Maximus after killing hedonistic, self-interested Emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) and, in theory, restoring the voice of democracy to the senate and the people. What’s happened in the interim is anything but: Rome is run by two foppishly fey brothers, Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger), man-boys with a penchant for mascara, bloodshed and monkeys. Taking a step back, it’s eerie to realize how much that paradigm feels all too close and reflective of our new now – earmarking the struggle for democracy as pervasive throughout humankind’s brief, short history.
G2 begins with the siege of Numidia (Northern Africa) by Roman legions led by general Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), a dutiful soldier whose political ideals don’t align with those of the decadent, indulgent twin emperors, though he seems all-in on the expansion of the republic. Galleons crash into a seawall, flaming boulders are catapulted, arrows fly and swords get crossed. The resistance is fervent and game, led in part by a farmer-military tactician named Hanno (a beefed up Paul Mescal, of “Aftersun” and “Foe”) whose wife (Yuval Gowen) likewise straps on the lorica segmentata and joins the fray, but Marcus and his troops overwhelm the seaside city easily. Caught by an arrow, Hanno’s wife is one of the casualties. As a result – just as it was with Maximus – a blood grudge ignites and becomes the film’s plot-driving fire: revenge or death.
Given the title and what came before, the action heads back to Rome, where Marcus is feted for his feat while Hanno is shackled and thrown into the gladiator pool overseen by Denzel Washington’s Macrinus, a former slave turned gladiator turned backroom fixer and ultimately, shrewd political manipulator. Rhinos, killer baboons and sharks (yes sharks, they flood the Colosseum for one such contest) join the endless legion of hulking Master Blasters the ill-equipped gladiators have to confront. Akin to the Maximus arc, Hanno becomes an arena sensation for his fortitude, smartly engineered victories (baboon biting not withstanding) and fanciful beheadings. But as this is old Rome, the real violence is what goes on behind gauzy veils in unofficial councils where schemes within schemes are hatched. Macrinus, who seems to have a J. Edgar Hoover-sized file on everyone in town, plays the ends against the means, promising Hanno his shot at Marcus if he can survive long enough; Marcus, angered by mass corruption and injustice, weighs an insurrection to return Rome to its starving masses. Marcus’ wife, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), the sister of Commodus and Maximus’ love-interest in G1, it turns out, has blood ties to Hanno (the movie tries to obfuscate this point until midway in, but the plot twist – which I won’t tip – is as clear as day, early on).
The machinations feed and play off each other with Shakespearean overtones. Washington’s performance even feels like a kitschy extension of his 2021 performance in “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” He chews the screen while Mescal simmers, seethes and burns. This is Mescal’s first big studio film, and while he’s up to the task, his Hanno doesn’t have the gravelly gravitas of Crowe’s Maximus; he’s mono-focused whereas Maximus seemed to legitimately play the long game. As Marcus, Pascal is dour and soulful in the thin, thankless part that is mostly tinder fanned to fuel the plot. It’s Nielsen, classic and captivating, who shines with a bigger part to play. It’s her uneasy and evolving relationship with Hanno that becomes the film’s emotional epicenter.
Like “Napoleon,” there’s a lot packed into “Gladiator II.” Not all of it sticks. The overly sexualized identities of the two emperors (and others), gets far too close to the hyperbolic tipping point (think “Caligula”) and stokes the embers of gender politics that so roiled and divided our nation two weeks ago. Then there’s the matter of seemingly unlimited access to Hanno in his cordoned-off jail cell between contests, where Lucilla and Marcus continually score covert meetings despite the emperors’ forbidding. As far as history goes, Nielsen and Mescal’s characters were true historic figures, as was Commodus, but the plotlines and narrative in the two “Gladiators” are all historical fiction. It’s too bad we can’t turn the page like Scott and Scarpa and rescript this moment.
In this throwback neo-noir baked in the David Fincher oven of dark serial-killer thrillers (“Seven,” “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “Zodiac”) director John Lee Hancock (“The Blind Side,” “The Rookie”) scores something of a casting coup, landing a trio of Academy Award-winners for his leads. Hancock has been wanting to make “The Little Things” since the early ’90s, when he penned it and (around the same time) “A Perfect World,” the Clint Eastwood-helmed crime drama starring Kevin Costner. At one point Steven Spielberg’s name was attached to the project (too dark), but now things have come full circle with the writer-turned-director taking charge of his scene-by-scene, murder mystery blueprint.
The drama takes place in L.A. around the time Hancock wrote it, well before cellphones, social media and reliable and readily available DNA testing. A gray-dusted Denzel Washington takes center as Joe “Deke” Deacon, a deputy from a dusty town north of L.A. who must reluctantly head back to the city of his former employ to pick up evidence. While there he drops in on a burgeoning investigation led by Jimmy Baxter (Rami Malek), a tightly coiled homicide dick newly onto the trail of what looks to be a serial killer. Deke tags along to one crime scene, and the Frick-and-Frack tandem click. Deke decides to stick around and help QB from the backseat. Like “LA Confidential” (1997), the “The Little Things” is less about the who-did-it than the people pursuing the criminal acts, though suspect numero uno Albert Sparma (Jared Leto, sporting bad chompers, a prosthetic schnoz, low-riding paunch and a bow-legged gait) is something of a scene stealer, two parts Charlie Manson (sans flock), one part the maniacal god complex that Leto dredged up for “Blade Runner 2049” (2017) and a dash of Hannibal Lecter thrown in for good fun. Granted, he’s not as lethal as any of those lads, but he does drive a bitchin’ ’70s Chevy Nova SS and really knows how to get under everybody’s skin. When Sparma (sounds like a hot Italian sub with oozing mozzarella, right?) isn’t ripping it up with philosophical psychobabble that feels written for the lips of Jim Morrison, we get the dark why of Deke’s being run out of L.A. and start to see that Baxter’s overreaching confidence might be more chest puffing than can-do.
“The Little Things” moves in mysterious, murky tics embossed by John Schwartzman’s shadowy but sharp cinematography and Thomas Newman’s moody score. Ir all feels so visceral, deep and compelling, but when the reveals come back around, many of the threads register all for naught, a goose chase without the fowl. Washington (“Training Day,” “Glory”) and Malek (an electric Freddy Mercury in “Bohemian Rhapsody”) often feel like they’re occupying sketches of complex men, their renowned talent square pegs shoved in round holes. Malek, boyish and slick, feels too fresh and wide-eyed for a part that demands a more world-weary soul. Leto (“Dallas Buyer’s Club”), on the other hand, is a merry pixie of perversion, dancing his way around Hancock’s noirish landscape pulling strings and pushing buttons, consequences be damned – much like the film itself.
The all-star lineup fails to shine through in Antoine Fuqua’s remake of The Magnificent Seven
Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and Yul Brynner — that’s a pretty tough trio to beat in any context and just one half of the star-studded cast of the original Magnificent Seven. That Western classic directed by John Sturges was itself a rebranding of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (1954) and while the cross-genre translation made sense back in 1960, the current redux by Antoine Fuqua (Shooter and Training Day) doesn’t offer much of a spin besides boasting a diverse crew (an African American, Asian, Native American, and Mexican among the mix). Even then, with the exception of one “his kind” comment in reference to Byong-hun Lee’s blade-wielding character of Chinese descent, there’s not one drop of racial tension. Had the septet been hot pink fuchsia, the bad guy’s wouldn’t take notice. It certainly wouldn’t flavor their dull backlot dialog, but it might improve their ability to shoot and hit anything, because as the movie has it, their blazing guns — sans a lone Gatling gun mounted outside the cow-poke town — couldn’t strike the broadside of Kim Kardashian’s famous posterior.
Fuqua’s posse, which features Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, and Ethan Hawke, is a pretty well-armed lot, but as they team up and ride out it becomes clear that something’s off with thisSeven. Sure, the scenery’s panoramic and lovely, but after a long, bouncy canter across the prairie, saddle soreness sets in well before the first bullet’s chambered. What’s missing are personality and philosophical idealism let alone brooding, macho conflict — all requisite when telling a tale of morally ambiguous men walking in a lawless land. It’s as if Fuqua took Sturges’ blueprint, connected the dots, then forgot to bring his palette to the set. Continue reading →
BOSTON — Bostonians, how we love our town. And as the years have gone by, Hollywood has loved the Hub too. Why the love?
Some of it has to do with the scenic, historical richness our city has to offer, some of it has to do with (the controversial) tax break incentives to use Boston as a backlot, some of it has to do with the waning power the unions hold and much of it has to do with Boston’s deep and storied criminal past that has become a romantic obsession in Tinseltown.
So used it is, that Dennis Lehane, who’s penned many crime novels set here that have become successful film adaptations also shot here (“Mystic River,” “Gone Baby Gone” and “Shutter Island”), flipped the setting for the script of “The Drop” from Dorchester to Brooklyn.
The latest Hollywood product to call the Hub home, “The Equalizer,” opened this weekend. While it’s not likely to be a Boston-branded movie, it does make excellent use of the city, balancing the dark criminal past and peripheral pockets that still persist today with the sweeping gentrification.
It’s a neat and true testament to see the unpretentious working class streets of East Boston (where Denzel Washington’s equalizer lives in a humble apartment) coupled with an Edward Hopper-esque diner in Chelsea offset by the wide shots of the Zakim Bridge and a high-rise criminal perch with panoramic views of the Financial District and the Seaport. The film also boasts the single best use of a Boston Herald delivery truck as a plot device. Continue reading →
Here’s a zany idea, take a moderately successful 1980s TV crime drama staring a British actor (Edward Woodward. the compelling condemned lieutenant in Breaker Morant) as a retired “C.I.A.” agent living in New York City who “fixes” peoples’ problems, drop in Denzel Washington and transpose the setting to Boston. The result would seem likely to be pretty weak tea that, without Washington, might be something heading for the vast realm of VOD obscurity without a theatrical release. And still, even with the Oscar-winning actor, is a payoff possible?
The good news for this iteration of The Equalizer, however, is that moody stylist Antoine Fuqua has the helm. He and Washington blew audiences’ minds back in 2001 with the bad cop fable Training Day. There, the synergy of their collaboration shone through brightly, and here, it goes a long way, too. The bad news, or not so good, is that the script is penned by Richard Wenk, a guy who’s made his jam by doing Expendables films and The Mechanic remake. It’s within his milieu, sure, but those testosterone-infused retreats were never going to make members of the Screenwriters Guild take pause during awards season. Continue reading →
For What it's Worth 